Non-destructive assessment of the three-point-bending strength of mortar beams using radial basis function neural networks

This paper presents a new method for assessing the three-point-bending (3PB) strength of mortar beams in a non-destructive manner, based on neural network (NN) models. The models are based on the radial basis function (RBF) architecture and the fuzzy means algorithm is employed for training, in order to boost the prediction accuracy. Data for training the models were collected based on a series of experiments, where the cement mortar beams were subjected to various bending mechanical loads and the resulting pressure stimulated currents (PSCs) were recorded. The input variables to the NN models were then calculated by describing the PSC relaxation process through a generalization of Boltzmannn-Gibbs statistical physics, known as non-extensive statistical physics (NESP). The NN predictions were evaluated using k-fold cross-validation and new data that were kept independent from training; it can be seen that the proposed method can successfully form the basis of a non-destructive tool for assessing the bending strength. A comparison with a different NN architecture confirms the superiority of the proposed approach.